ECS X79 Motherboard Spotted!

The ECS X79R-AX features the X79 chipset and PCIe Gen 3 technology. Besides sporting the unique layout of having its LGA2011 CPU socket flanked by pairs of DIMM slots, it resembles motherboards that belong to ECS' Black Series lineage like the ECS A990FXM-A; an AMD FX990 board which we previewed earlier this year.

The board has two pairs of DDR3 DIMM slots that support OC memory modules with clock frequencies of up to 2400MHz. It also has a pair of Realtek Gigabit LAN controllers. On closer scrutiny, we identified two PCIe Gen3 PEG slots with x16 speeds (the darker toned slots), with these two slots occupied, it is not certain how the rest of the PCIe 8x slots are utilized as they would not be available simultaneously when the two PCIe Gen3 PEG slots are in use. We'll find out when we get our hands on the board for testing.

Besides having multi-GPU support, this board seems to have twelve SATA connectors and on-board Bluetooth 3.0 support (at least according to the photo). Targeting rig builders and system tweakers, it has reset and power buttons for their convenience. Located at the top of the back panel, we spy a reset CMOS button for setting things straight if their testing and tweaking efforts go awry.

The ECS X79R-AX will be made available to us soon and we hope to put it under scrutiny to garner more concrete specifications and measurements than the current promotional picture offers.